Saturday, February 14, 2009

Update On iPod, iPhone Syncing Problems

I haven’t seen much in the forums on the syncing problems that seemed to abound last week. Since users across multiple platforms were experiencing the problem, and Apple released a notice that users should deautorize and reauthorize their systems to clear the problem, I’m assuming that the root cause was related to changes in the libraries associated with DRM removal, not the 2.2.1 firmware, and that Apple has since cleared it up.

Although I didn’t experience the iTunes freeze ups, I had noticed an oddity in my syncs last week. iTunes showed a 1 on the app folder, indicating that there was 1 new app available for syncing, and after I synced by USB it was still there. When I disconnected, there was a corresponding 1 on the Touch’s app icon. I tapped it and the iPod told me that I had a version upgrade for Labyrinth to download. I did, and the app updated wirelessly and worked fine afterwards.

iTunes still showed 1 new app to download, so I synced it again via USB, just to see if it would go away. Nope. I did see a copy of Labyrinth in the trash though, indicating that iTunes had replaced it with the upgraded version.

Through subsequent syncs, the 1 stayed on the app folder in iTunes, but didn’t reappear on the iPod. This morning, I synced again, and once again there was no change to iTunes, but the iPod had now gotten its “1 app download” indicator back. I went through the steps to upgrade the app again, and viola, the “1 app download” indicator finally went away on both iTunes and the iPod. There was also another copy of Labyrinth in the trash.

Perhaps Apple has reissued certain downloads that weren’t playing well with the libraries. Who knows, I’m just happy that everything is working.